Backstage Capital’s Amiah Sheppard Wins Investor Visionary of the Year

by VentureFuel | 2019-03-19

NEW YORK CITY (March 19, 2019) – VentureFuel, the company that connects established companies with emerging technologies and startups, announced today that Backstage Capital’s Amiah Sheppard was voted its annual Investor Visionary of the Year.

The Visionary of the Year is voted on by innovation peers at corporations, venture capital firms and startups to determine which Investor is the most innovative and best embraces new technologies to solve real business challenges. Thousands voted for the elite field of finalists that included investors from Alta Global Ventures, Bam Ventures, Comeback Capital, ICONNYC, Comcast Lift Labs, Courtside Ventures, FJ Labs, Mallory Ventures, RevTech Ventures, ThoughtWorks, Betaworks Ventures, Berman Strategic Advisors, Cornwall Trade and Investment, Sterling VC, Glasswing Ventures, and many more.

As the Director of Backstage LA, Backstage Capital’s Los Angeles accelerator program, Amiah Sheppard is an innovation curator. She spent the last 5 years examining the myriad ways founders harness, strategize, and utilize their unique socio-cultural location to get to their desired successful outcome. A graduate of Columbia University in the City of New York, she cultivated an academic and practical education leveraging sociology to explore gender and organizational leadership (specifically women/women of color’s leadership experiences), human resources, non-profit, social impact consulting, entrepreneurship, and business development. As a perpetual learner, Amiah has prioritized creating and implementing intersectional solutions previously at BRAVA Investments and Propper Daley. Currently, she is particularly excited about investing in beauty and wellness tech companies; and about the thriving LA tech ecosystem for underrepresented founders.

“Backstage Capital’s steadfast commitment to minimizing tech funding disparities by investing in high-potential underrepresented founders is furthered by its international accelerator programs. I am grateful to help lead investment and programing in effort to enable founders to be tapped into networks and resources that give them access to tangible and scalable business opportunities.” said Sheppard. “It is truly an honor to be recognized by VentureFuel and my peers as the Visionary of the Year.”

“Amiah is a dynamic visionary, that along with her colleagues at Backstage Capital, has identified the enormous opportunity in the fact that less than 10% of all venture capital deals go to women, People of Color, or LGBT founders. They have invested in over 100 companies led by underrepresented founders and are driving opportunity for their founders as well as results for their investors. Amiah is changing the landscape with her efforts and is helping all of us envision a better, more profitable and inclusive future. Our team is honored to work with her and thrilled to have her as the Investor Visionar of The Year.”

For more background on Jamie and all of the VentureFuel Visionaries finalists, visit: www.venturefuel.net/visionaries.

Amiah Sheppard, Director, Backstage LA, Backstage Capital
Jaime Fabricant, Director, Store of the Future Innovation & Execution, PepsiCo Beverages
Andrew Green, Global Director of Innovation, Anheuser-Busch InBev
Beth Brady, Chief Marketing Officer, Principal Financial Group
Brian Cummings, Partner, Alta Global Ventures
Dasha Zhitenev, Brand Activation Manager, Pernod Ricard
David Campbell, VP, Global Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), Beam Suntory
Deepen Parikh, Partner, Courtside Ventures
Eyal Bino, Partner, ICONYC labs
Fielding Kidd, Director of Business Partnerships, LIFT Labs, Comcast Strategic Development
Ben Feeney, Senior Director – Global Innovation & New Initiatives, MillerCoors
Jeff Weinstein, Principal, FJ Labs
John McCauley, ECP, CMO, Screenvision
Jon Hook, Founder, Mallory Ventures
Jonathan Fine, VP, Business Development, RevTech Ventures
Marcelo De Santis, Executive Advisor, Digital Transformation, ThoughtWorks
Martin Sambusini, Disruptive Innovation Senior Marketing Manager, The Hershey Company
Matthew Hartman, Partner, Betaworks Ventures
Mitchell Berman, Managing Partner, Berman Strategic Advisors
Nicola Lloyd, Cornwall Trade & Investment
Patty Montagno, VP, Marketing, Treasury Wine Estates
R. Mordecai, Director, Innovation + Partnerships, INNOCEAN Worldwide
Rohit Gupta, partner, SterlingVC
Sarah Fay, Managing Director, Glasswing Ventures
Scott Shane, Managing Partner, Comeback Capital
Shamin Walsh, Managing Director, BAM VENTURES LLC
Stephanie Lensing, Communication Innovation, General Mills
Tim Madigan, VP or eCommerce, Tyson Foods

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About VentureFuel, Inc.

VentureFuel helps established companies around the world unlock growth by partnering with emerging startups and breakthrough technologies. VentureFuel is unique in that they focus on accelerating the established corporations’ growth, yet these partnerships also have resulted in over $10m in revenue to the startups (win-win). VentureFuel is 100% independent and agnostic and does not take equity from startups. They source from their proprietary global network of the best investors, scouts, founders and academics and then apply creative strategists to develop custom concepts that they then implement and measure. They have executed over 100 pilots and partnerships with brands from Nike to AB InBev to Pepsi to General Mills to Beam Suntory. Learn more at: www.venturefuel.net.